Requiem for a Doose
by Captain Fingers
Summary: As a family spirals into an inevitable conflict, Stars Hollow faces a question it cannot or will not answer.
1. Chapter 1

On his way from the bank, Luke tries to ignore Kirk on the side of the road doing god-knows-what with god-knows-who. He tries, but fails miserably as Kirks desperately runs after Luke and steps in front of the truck. Luke's bakes squeal to a stop just inches from turning Kirk into road kill.

Always coming up with good ideas, that Kirk. Luke wonders out loud why anyone hasn't tossed him out of town. Out of a canon. Luke bets if he did, Star's Hollow would honor him with a holiday—Luke Day. On that day, everyone would be required to leave him the hell alone.

Oh well, enough daydreaming and back to being angry with the Kirk standing deer-like in front of him.

"Give me one good reason why I shouldn't let my foot slip off the brake," grumbled Luke, whose muscles scream to let go and give the gas pedal all she's got.

Kirk heaved out between gulps of air, "It's Taylor. I need you to help me move him."

"Move him?" slamming the door on his way out of the truck and grumbling, Luke walks over to the bizarre pale man.

Kirk points to the incapacitated figure of Taylor lying on the ground, a milkshake freshly fallen from his grubby fingers. He looks to be halfway inside what looks like a cross between a Muppet and the Blob.

Luke rolls his eyes. He's not surprised if Star Hollow's beloved…whatever he does fell into an alcohol-induced stupor. Honestly, nothing these escaped mental patients do will ever surprise Luke, and he makes a point of telling Kirk so. They could start a nude biathlon and Luke wouldn't be surprised. He rubs his forehead in frustration.

Kirk replies to this rambling speech with, "So you'll help me, then?"

With a wide shrug of the shoulders, he crouches down by the KO'd bureaucrat and begins attempting to lift him up. This guy's way heavier than he looks Luke notices as he tries pulling his milkshake-loaded gullet off the ground.

In his struggling frustration, Luke asks, "Kirk, what's Taylor—"

He needed to say no more for something else answered his question. Something which was seeping into his shirt, the two-hundred dollar shirt he uses only for business and formal occasions. Luke makes an outloud note to dunk Kirk's head in milkshake later on till he looks down to see the actual substance. His shirt being white, it's not hard for Luke to tell exactly what the mysterious liquid is. He traces the red ichor back to its source.

Immediately Luke springs to his feet, pacing and muttering, "Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god."

Kirk offers his sympathies to his friend's mounting panic, "Yeah, I thought he was unconscious at first too, easy mistake to make. I figured Taylor must have overdosed on milkshakes until I realized you can't overdose on milkshakes, unless you're diabetic…"

After a thoughtful look spreads in his eyes, he looks back to Luke, "Is Taylor diabetic? That might explain it."

Luke leans into Kirk, seriousness darkening his face, "Even if Taylor was diabetic, I doubt diabetes causes this" he points to the stuff covering most of his shirt, "to spread everywhere."

"Oh," Kirk goes back to contemplating before asking again, "You think he's a hemophiliac?"

Luke needs to take a second holding his head to diffuse the rage building up in his skull. Of course Kirk would be involved in these shenanigans, of course. Of course he would drag Luke into the muck with him, of course.

Luke takes a deep breath before talking to the confused man-child again. Since when did he turn into Kirk's parent?

"Kirk," he says with as much weight as he can, "You realize how serious this is? We're standing next to Taylor Doose at four in the morning, shoving him into into—what the hell is that?"

Kirks looks back at the amorphous Muppet-beast attempting to engulf Taylor's body, "O that? It's a Snuggie. I thought the police would appreciate the gesture."

Luke immediately facepalms, probably enough to cause brain damage if he's lucky. Has he been sentenced to a limbo of sitcom-shenanigans? It certainly feels like it. He tries talking reason to Kirk once more, "No they won't appreciate, Kirk. They won't appreciate it at all. In fact, if they found us right now, the last thing they'd feel is appreciation."

Once again, his life has the timing of a Gilligan cutaway. As the words leaves his lips, a police siren immediately sounds, red and blue light flashing on them like a tightly-contained melodrama. As soon as Kirk hears it, he lays on the ground assuming the position.

As the officer approaches, Luke holds back the urge to ask the officer if he was free to charge head-first into the brick wall behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

_Oh yeah, 'Gilmore Girls' doesn't belong to me and never will._

* * *

><p>Stepping from a black and white car, Lorelai walks towards the diner's entrance where daughter Rory waits. In fact, several people stand there waiting. As an afterthought, Lorelai turns back to the car, waving and shouting, "Thanks for the ride, Sam!"<p>

She returns to a bewildered Rory who asks, "Was that a Desoto?"

"Since when did you become an auto mechanic?"

"Since I picked it up from Dean."

"That better be the only thing you picked up from Dean," Lorelai mutters under her breath.

"—what?"

"Nothing." She grins, "What are you doing out here? There's no coffee out here. You need to be in there, where the coffee's waiting for us to drink it and eventually send out nervous system into a massive breakdown."

"I would, but Luke hasn't let anyone in."

"Why not?"

"Didn't you hear?" Miss Patty instantly materializes behind them like an over-perfumed spirit of Christmas, "The police found Luke and Kirk next to Taylor Doose's body. The police took both of them in."

Lorelai looks at the billowy woman incredulously, "So did they let him go?"

Rory's eyes almost jump out of their sockets, "Wait, Taylor's dead? Our Taylor?"

Ignoring Lorelai, Patty answers Rory, "Fraid so. And in the most horrible way, too. Garroted, can you imagine? Oh well, bye girls…"

With a swish Patty flutters away like a ghost, a gossiping ghost. Something about Miss Patty give Lorelai the creeps on a gut level. How does she know everything? God-like omniscience would be too easy an explanation; it had to be something else. Maybe she has tentacles that crawl through the sewers. Yeah, that's why she wears all those billowy dresses, to hide those tentacles. Those evil, gossipy tentacles.

Lorelai shares her theory with her daughter who in turn simply nods, "Maybe she just has a crystal ball. I wouldn't entirely go the Lovecraft route yet."

"Just you wait, she probably keeps a tome of eldritch lore hidden in that dress. Now, if we could use one of those unearthly reality-bending powers to get into the diner…"

"Would one day not eating at the diner be so bad?"

Lorelai gasps at such heresy, "Sweetie don't say that! That's like saying tie-die sweaters is an actual fashion choice. That's like saying an Uwe Boll film fest is a good idea. Don't ever, ever say that! If you do, the Earth would get sucked into a black hole!"

"Bad idea or not, we can't go in. Let's just wait." It was sad that Rory had to be the voice of reason in this family. Speaking of which, "Did grandma talk to you yet?"

"Can't talk about it yet, haven't had coffee."

"We'll have to face it sooner or later, better now when you're upset about the diner."

Lorelai pats her head, "Ah, my little psychologist. Now if we could turn you against Emily, we could have her dancing the can-can with Richard!"

"She's not that bad…"

"Honey, she's trying to invite us to the Lodge. The lodge, which my parents spent years making sure I never found out about. The only time they told me was when I left the house and they said, "Pity you can't join the Lodge now' and that's all they said. And now not only they want me to come to a meeting Friday night, they want you? The whole thing stinks, it stinks to Canada."

Rory sways her head back and forth, acting as the metronome to Lorelai's speech, "It's just one of those things grandma does to get out her system and when it's done, you guys will forgive each other and then everything will be okay again."

"Oh ho ho, you underestimate my mother. She has the power to turn anything into an obligation from hell. You could be munching on hors d'oeuvres and the next thing you know, you sold your soul to Emily Gilmore."

"Well, listen I gotta get going to Chilton's. You go do…whatever, okay? Bye." As they hug, Rory breaks it as a sliver of thought enters her head, "That whole Taylor thing is crazy, isn't it?"

Her words gives Lorelai pause, "Yeah, it's weird how everyone's acting so non-chalant about it."

"Well, it was Taylor."

"Yeah, I guess. Watch out for strangers!"

And Rory skips away, "I'll be sure to get into the first windowless van I see!"

"Tell Chris Hanson I said hi!

Now to do something about Luke's diner, she must find a way in. It was a crime against nature, against the very fabric of reality itself for Luke to close his diner so early. Murder be damned, Luke needs to keep it open! Where else will she get good coffee? Not from Doose's Market, that's for sure! –oh wait, she just insulted a dead guy's grocery store. It was in her head, nonetheless it must be amajor wrongt! Wasn't it? Dead people can read minds, right? Oh god, the thought of Taylor reading her every thought sends her reeling.

…okay, she was losing track again. Luke's diner, that was top priority. Now there must be a way in…she walks to the back to find a back door. With a couple of tugs…it doesn't open. She walks back to the front, where most of the crowd have just scattered.

Two more minutes of looking and she's so close to giving up. But she has to get in! The coffee is beckoning to her like a sweet siren from…wherever Luke gets his coffee. Maybe he gets it from Columbia? She laughs at the idea of Luke as a Pablo Escobar-like figure, inspecting his own private coffee plantation—wait, focus! Focus! She's looking for a way in, right?

And there it is: the window. Though this isn't best idea she's had, she'll march on ahead with it. With an extremely convenient, perhaps too convenient rock she chucks it at the window. The window breaks into several pieces with a large smash. Hey, coffee can make her do drastic things! Besides, she could always blame it on Taylor's murderer, right? She tip-toes inside as if it makes any difference.

And in comes running Luke to see Lorelai standing in the mess as child would after getting caught standing in a broken vase. Luke stands frozen as if he's mentally prepping himself for the biggest rage-driven meltdown in the history of Starts Hollow. And with on deep breath he begins wiping the counter busily.

"We're closed," he calls out.

"I know," she seats herself as if nothing happened, "but see, I need my coffee."

"No you don't; it's not a national emergency."

"Oh but it is. Without coffee, I could fall asleep on the job and terrorists with a stolen nuclear bomb could hijack the Inn and they would throw me in the basement! Then the only person keeping us from total annihilation would be Michel and we'd know how that would end. So give me coffee, please?"

"You're not getting coffee; we're closed," he says without ever looking up from his cleaning. But Lorelai has a determination that can make the sun freeze over…

"Hey hey hey," she says, tiliting her head at every angle to look like an endearing cat, an endearing cat who's clawing up Luke's final nerve. It's practically sawing at Luke's last nerve.

So fine, Lorelai wins this round. Lorelai wins every round. Why doesn't he set up a scoreboard that says: Luke: 0, Lorelai: infinity?

He slams his hands on the table, giving her the most intense stare he can muster, "Okay, so you broke into my diner and you're irritating the hell out of me, so why don't I give you some coffee before you do any more damage?"

He slides a hot cup of joe over to Lorelai and she accepts it, slowly. She's not going away yet, "What about one for Rory?"

With an audible groan, he nearly throws another coffee to her, "Great, now please get out of my diner."

"You're not getting rid of me yet, are you?"

"Yes I am. In fact, consider yourself gotten rid of. In fact, you are beyond gotten rid of; you don't exist."

"I'm not that easy to throw out, Jean Paul Sartre."

"You sure aren't. Now please, for my own sanity, leave!"

She scoots from the counter to the door before turning back to Luke, "I heard Miss Patty talking."

He keeps going about his business.

"About Taylor."

He stops before throwing down the rag and scratching the back of his head, "It was just…a little mix-up. Nothing serious."

"Oh, you're right; people are found moving dead bodies every day. I shoved three in a dumpster just yesterday!"

Luke shakes his head at her obvious sarcasm, "Okay, it is that serious. So I spend one night sharing a cell with Kirk, who keeps huddling up to me and crying. I'm not proud of it, but there it is! Now let's move on!"

"…but you got off didn't you?"

With a big sigh, Luke rolls his head. She'd never stop, would she?

"You make it sound like I actually did it," he says.

"No, no, no. I'm just saying you were found next to the dead body of a man who you say that you hate with a titanic passion day in, day out."

"Yeah, so did everyone else, so what? I had the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Lorelai replies with a shrug that says, 'Who knows? Now continue to foster my near-crippling dependency on coffee.'

Luke obliges by pouring her another coffee. He's already set his mental timer to forty seconds before that one disappears.

"If anyone's a suspect," he says, "It's Kirk. He was trying to shove him in a Snuggie—a Snuggie of all things, can you believe it? And now no one's seen him since…"

Something about that sentence makes Lorelai give him a weird look, saying, "Got any tentacles under that shirt?"

Luke simply shakes his head. This time Lorelai takes the cue to leave. She steps through the shattered window before calling back to Luke, "Take care of yourself. Don't get yourself in anymore crime scenes, David Caruso…"

Luke nods his thanks before marching upstairs. How did he get stuck with these lunatics?


End file.
